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Does New York Times food writer Mark Bittman get anything right? I doubt it. I once tried his recipe for hard-boiled eggs and the yolks were runny.

I ate the eggs anyway, but Bittman’s pronouncements about policy are less palatable, and I’m afraid that some credulous readers actually swallow them. His recent commentary, “Leave Organic Out of It,” is yet another hash of uninformed opinions and misinformation.

It’s tedious to deconstruct a Bittman column because there is always so much wrong with it, but let’s address a few misapprehensions and misrepresentations.

O Bittman does seem to have backed down from his rabid antagonism toward crops genetically engineered with the most modern, precise and predictable techniques. He now concedes grudgingly that they “are probably harmless” and that “the technology itself is not even a little bit nervous making.” (This construction, from a professional wordsmith?) In fact, after more than four billion acres planted worldwide and more than three trillion meals containing genetically engineered ingredients consumed in North America alone, there has not been a single ecosystem disrupted or a tummy ache confirmed. (Couldn't we get rid of the probably, Mark?)

Top: Lesser cornstalk borer larvae extensively damaged the leaves of this unprotected peanut plant. (Image Number K8664-2)-Photo by Herb Pilcher. Bottom: After only a few bites of peanut leaves of this genetically engineered plant (containing the genes of the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) bacteria), this lesser cornstalk borer larva crawled off the leaf and died. (Image Number K8664-1)-Photo by Herb Pilcher. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

O “[T]o date G.M.O.'s [genetically modified organisms] have been used by companies like Monsanto to maximize profits and further removing [sic] the accumulated expertise of generations of farmers from agriculture.” And how, exactly, is this different from the companies that make implements like tractors, combines and farm-management software, that have modernized farming practices and made them more profitable?

O Big agribusiness companies using the new techniques “have not been successful in moving sustainable agriculture forward (which is relevant because that was their claim).” The evidence argues otherwise. By improving weed control and reducing the need for plowing, genetically engineered herbicide-tolerant crops enable many farmers to adopt and maintain no- or reduced-tillage production systems, which results in important reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

According to a recent comprehensive analysis, “Based on savings arising from the rapid adoption of no-till/reduced tillage farming systems in North and South America, an extra 6,706 million kg of soil carbon is estimated to have been sequestered in 2012 (equivalent to 24,613 million tonnes of carbon dioxide that has not been released into the global atmosphere).”

Equally important, the higher yields and drought resistance of some genetically engineered crops make them more sustainable than conventional crops and, especially, than organically grown ones. As discussed below, organic agriculture is the scourge of sustainability.

O Bittman retreats into the deepest, darkest recesses of his parallel universe with his allusion to the “intensive and virtually unregulated use of…agricultural chemicals.” In fact, agricultural chemicals are subject to some of the most stultifying, burdensome, expansive and expensive regulation on the planet, courtesy of the relentlessly risk-averse Environmental Protection Agency. (Isn’t there an editor who reads Bittman’s copy before it’s published?)

Finally, we come to Bittman’s continuing slavish and uncritical devotion to organic agriculture: “Eating organic food is unquestionably a better option than eating nonorganic food; at this point, however, it’s a privilege” [italics in original]. That is unquestionably nothing more than silly, sentimental twaddle, especially in view of a 2012 study by researchers at Stanford University's Center for Health Policy published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. They performed a meta-analysis in which results from the scientific literature were combined. Data from 237 studies were aggregated and analyzed to determine whether organic foods are safer or healthier than non-organic foods. The researchers concluded that fruits and vegetables that met the criteria for “organic” were on average no more nutritious than their far cheaper conventional counterparts, nor were those foods less likely to be contaminated by pathogenic bacteria like E. coli or Salmonella. Moreover, although non-organic fruits and vegetables did have higher pesticide residues, more than 99 percent of the time the levels were below the permissible, very conservative safety limits set by federal regulators.

Bittman’s phobia about chemical pesticides in agriculture is so, well, jejune. The vast majority of pesticidal substances that we consume occur in our diets “naturally,” and they are present in organic foods as well as conventional ones. In a landmark research article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, biochemist Bruce Ames and his colleagues found that “99.99 percent (by weight) of the pesticides in the American diet are chemicals that plants produce to defend themselves. Only 52 natural pesticides have been tested in high-dose animal cancer tests, and about half (27) are rodent carcinogens; these 27 are shown to be present in many common foods.”

The bottom line of Ames’ experiments: “Natural and synthetic chemicals are equally likely to be positive in animal cancer tests. We also conclude that at the low doses of most human exposures the comparative hazards of synthetic pesticide residues are insignificant.”

In other words, consumers who buy overpriced organic foods in order to avoid pesticide exposure are focusing their attention on 0.01% of the pesticides they consume.

Contrary to Bittman’s views, if you care about the environment, eating organic food is more of a sacrilege than a privilege. Organic farms produce far less food per unit of land and water than conventional ones. The low yields of organic agriculture -- typically 20%-50% lower than conventional agriculture -- impose various stresses on farmland and especially on water consumption.